UNIT-III

Cell Coverage for Signal & Traffic

 TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED:

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

 SIGNAL REFLECTIONS IN FLAT AND HILLY TERRAIN

OBTAINING THE MOBILE POINT-TO-POINT MODEL (LEE MODEL)

 EFFECT OF HUMAN MADE STRUCTURES

THE PHASE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DIRECT PATH AND A

GROUND-REFLECTED PATH

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 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Cell coverage can be based on signal coverage or on traffic coverage.

We have to examine the service area as occurring in one of the

following environments:

Human-made structures
In a building area
In an open area
In a suburban area
In an urban area

Natural terrains
Over flat terrain
Over hilly terrain
Over water
Through foliage areas

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 Ground Incident Angle and Ground Elevation Angle

A coordinate sketch in a flat terrain.

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 The ground incident angle θ is the angle of wave arrival incidently
pointing to the ground.

The ground elevation angle φ is the angle of wave arrival at the mobile unit.

Ground Reflection Angle and Reflection Point

A coordinate sketch in a hilly terrain.

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 THE MOBILE POINT-TO-POINT MODEL (LEE MODEL)

This mobile point-to-point model is obtained in three steps:

(1) generate a standard condition.

(2) obtain an area-to-area prediction model.

(3) obtain a mobile point-to-point model using the area-to-area model as a base.

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 A Standard Condition
To generate a standard condition and provide correction factors, we have used the
standard conditions shown on the left side and the correction factors on the right side
of Table

Generating a Standard Condition

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 Effect of the Human-Made Structures.

Because the terrain configuration of each city is different, and the human-made
structure of each city is also unique.

The way to factor out the effect due to the terrain configuration from the man-made
structures is to work out a way to obtain the path loss curve for the area.

The path loss curve obtained on virtually flat ground indicates the effects of the
signal loss due to solely human-made structures.

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 We may have to measure signal strengths at those high spots and also at
the low spots surrounding the cell sites.

Propagation path loss curves for human-made structures.

(a) For selecting measurement areas
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 Then the average path loss slope, which is a combination of measurements from
high spots and low spots along different radio paths in a general area, represents
the signal received as if it is from a flat area affected only by a different local
human-made structured environment.

(b) path loss phenomenon.

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 Therefore, the differences in area-to-area prediction curves are due to the different
manmade structures.

The measurements made in urban areas are different from those made in suburban
and open areas.

Any area-to-area prediction model can be used as a first step toward achieving the
point-to-point prediction model.

Area-to-area prediction model which is described here can be represented by two

parameters:
(1) the 1-mi (or 1-km) intercept point
(2) the path-loss slope.

The 1-mi intercept point is the power received at a distance of 1 mi from the
transmitter.

There are two general approaches to finding the values of the two parameters
experimentally.

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 1. Compare the area of interest with an area of similar human-made structures which
presents a curve as shown.

(c) Propagation path loss in different cities.

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 2. If the human-made structures of a city are different from the cities listed in
previous figure, a simple measurement should be carried out.

Set up a transmitting antenna at the center of a general area.

As long as the building height is comparable to the others in the area, the antenna
location is not critical.

Take six or seven measured data points around the 1-mi intercept and around the
10-mi boundary based on the high and low spots.

Then compute the average of the 1 mi data points and of the 10 mi data points.

By connecting the two values, the path-loss slope can be obtained.

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 If the area is very hilly, then the data points measured at a given distance from the
base station in different locations can be far apart.

In this case, we may take more measured data points to obtain the average path-
loss slope.

If the terrain of the hilly area is generally sloped, then we have to convert the data
points that were measured on the sloped terrain to a flat terrain in that area.

The conversion is based on the effective antenna-height gain as

where h1 is the actual height and he is the effective antenna height at either the 1-
or 10-mi locations.

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 Path-loss Phenomena

The plotted curves shown in the previous figure have different 1-mi intercepts and
different slopes.

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 (d) Explanation of the path-loss phenomenon.

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 The Phase Difference between a Direct Path and a Ground-Reflected Path

A simple model.

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 Based on a direct path and a ground-reflected path, where a direct path is a
line-of-sight (LOS) path with its received power

and a ground-reflected path with its reflection coefficient and phase changed after
reflection, the sum of the two wave paths can be expressed as:

where av = the reflection coefficient

φ = the phase difference between a direct path and a reflected path
P0 = the transmitted power
d = the distance
λ = the wavelength

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 In a mobile environment av = −1 because of the small incident angle of the ground wave
caused by a relatively low cell-site antenna height.
Thus,

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 Then the received power of becomes :

If φ is less than 0.6 rad, then sin(φ/2) ≈ φ/2, cos(φ/2) ≈ 1 and equation simplifies to

From Equation, we can deduce two relationships as follows:

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 where ΔP is the power difference in decibels between two different path lengths and
ΔG is the gain (or loss) in decibels obtained from two different antenna heights at the
cell site.

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